Triumph
by thi3f
Summary: Vash has left Knives to prove his brother wrong--human beings *are* worth the effort, and the brothers aren't so different from them after all. Vash learns this lesson painfully. Warning: VashTorture, booze and the full moon!


Yay, another Trigun 'fic from me! ^_^ I just love Vash and Knives and the entire Trigun gang. It's an awesome show. I basically pulled some of the town names and facts about vash and Knives from my @$$, so if you disagree. . . .well, koo-koo-machoo!  
  
Feedback, as always, is worshipped.  
  
Archiving? Sureness! Just make sure to ask me, all right? Otherwise, you'll regret it. I know who you are, and I know where you live. *^_^* Chee.  
  
Trigun (duh) doesn't belong to me. I'm just a fan.  
  
Onwards!  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Triumph  
  
  
  
Vash stood up and turned around, and in the back of his mind he realised that the night was trouble. Fuzzy instinct had warned him at the edge of town not to enter this particular bar, to bypass this particular town called March and move on. The buildings and inhabitants' expressions reported danger to his common sense, even after one too many lonely days canvassing the desert.  
  
It was Vash's foolish habit that relaxation dominated, and he had spent the entire evening consuming glass after glass of booze. There was a crashing set of footsteps at his back.  
  
Trouble, indeed.  
  
Or, rather, he would have been in trouble were he human. The outlaw in red made endevoured to emulate humanity in himself, though, including danger reactions and appearances right down to the very last shudder of fear and the dilating pupils.  
  
Vash fancied he was getting rather good at the game, too.  
  
"You," the thickly built man rumbled as he leaned over the 'plant's six foot height and cruelly massaged his jackhammer knuckles. The bar hushed. "You wrecked July." Ominous.  
  
Vash laughed out loud in the silence. Obviously, a mistake had been made. Better to just explain about Knives and let it rest at that! "I may have been the instrument of destruction, but *I* certainly didn't-"  
  
"Shut up!" the man howled and grit his teeth. Vash could imagine the man's hackles raising if he had been a dog. It wasn't a bad comparison, Vash realised, with the artificially sharpened teeth, the beady black eyes that glared wrathfully out from a thick tanned face contorted with rage and . . . grief? Could he really see grief?  
  
Vash's heart immediately swam out to him.  
  
Clunk. Vash took the first step towards Dog, opening his mouth and lifting a gloved hand. He would like to explain, to show that man that it was all right, that *everything* in this world was all right. He would heal whatever gash lay on Dog's heart and replace what had been stolen by his Angel Arm. Vash wanted to purify the beast before him. Fear was in the air, humming and vibrating along unseen threads like beads of water on a spider web, calling a crowd.  
  
Purity.  
  
He never got the chance as Dog decked him with those same fists.  
  
*I. . .should duck.*  
  
That fist would hurt, wouldn't it?  
  
But wouldn't his blood perhaps heal a little rage? Cleanse a scrap of this animal's spirit?  
  
Doubtful.  
  
Maybe.  
  
Who knew how humans worked, anyway? He wasn't any older than a baby. A mere forty years old.  
  
All right, then. The punch lands.  
  
"Unf!" Neck snapping back and tears clouding sky-pure eyes, blood spraying from some severed vein and plop-plopping on the bar's glossy surface. A bead of the stuff slid slowly down the side of Vash's glass and eased itself into whiskey. Tremors shook as Vash collapsed once and caught himself against the wood, tasting blood and feeding rage.  
  
"That. . . hurt."  
  
The man was angry for July and such a little taste of a culprit's life wasn't going to fill up the void in his chest, not nearly.  
  
Advancing, more tremors shaking the bloody whiskey as the dog brought down his hated prey, and the pure blood swirled into poison, created tiny nebulas and galaxies in Vash's glass above his head. It was doubtful, really, if there was enough goodness in that little thimble of crimson to counteract the golden drug. The universe shook as feet and boots came into play instead of angrily balled fists.  
  
"Uh! Ung! N-N-ack!"  
  
The thick black boot caught him in the sweet spot, perfectly to make him wretch and gag.  
  
"Geff-kaff-keff! Ka-aff!"  
  
He couldn't breathe! He couldn't draw air in to fill the gap and restore reason. He couldn't banish this world of pain under the heavy rule of the boots falling from the sky and the shouts rising to it above his head. More and more blood trickled slowly, from his ears, from his nose, from his mouth. Even, he fancied, from his eyes. Why couldn't he cry enough blood to make them stop?  
  
But finally it did.  
  
The universe stopped with one fateful shudder.  
  
There wasn't anything left to hurt, no dignity reclaimed by landing another blow against the lanky body on the floor of the bar. One man gave a half- hearted nudge as if to flip him over, but the spirit had departed the premises.  
  
There was no innocent, happy sparkle in Vash's eyes for the moment, only a reflection of what they saw in themselves: pain. Pain that would fade, but that the shuddering, whimpering wreck of an outlaw could share a piece of their heartbreak was enough.  
  
Human beings, after all, only wanted to share and be together.  
  
Together.  
  
That's all they wanted.  
  
On the floor, Vash began to chuckle, pushing the lighthearted sound through heavy eyelids and swollen lips and bloody tissue. He forced it into the atmosphere of the desert bar. The leader, the wild dog from before, stopped as he heard the noise and turned to his fellows.  
  
"Ignore him. He's crazy. 'taint human." Grunting and snuffling, they moved on, searching for more blood to replace the life they had lost. Left the laughing half-wit where he lay in a puddle of his self.  
  
No human could laugh after what they had shared. No human could find a small piece of joy in this. No human at all. In the fact, the 'plant realised as his systems automatically began to cease the blood flow and replace broken skin, they hadn't been able to differentiate him from themselves.  
  
Success, then.  
  
"Knives!" The voice was a mere croak, directed both at his brother and at the men's retreating backs. "Kn-kniv-es. . . y-you're. . .wrong. The. . .same." If he could feel what the humans felt, what made him any different? Was he not a brother to them, as well?  
  
He bled the same colour, true? Did Knives not as well?  
  
In pain, the brothers and the human race were one.  
  
And if they were one, who was to say the 'plants were so different in other ways? Summoning strength from deep in his chest-his *human* chest-Vash collected his bags and staggered from the bar. Gingerly the man touched his face and fingers came away slick and glistening under the full moon. Somehow, someway, his lips curved into a smile and his step gained another determination. Every journey began with a single step.  
  
"Love and peace."  
  
But until that day, pain.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
. 


End file.
